Pushing the Limits
by Throwrand
Summary: When Ruby is told of an ominous threat that the Breach brought about, she works tirelessly to improve her skills to face the danger. In the process, she injures herself badly; splitting the team and placing her own future in jeopardy. Rated T for safety. Currently on hiatus.
1. Resting in Petals

Disclaimer: You guys know the drill, RWBY is owned by Monty Oum and Roosterteeth. I don't own anything but this crappy laptop.

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It was late at night but Yang was resolutely remaining awake. Blake's and Weiss's breathing had fallen into easy sleeping rhythms more than an hour ago; Blake breathing in right as Weiss breathed out. Yang wouldn't ordinarily notice or care about details like that, and felt a bit creepy but she had nothing else to focus on as Ruby was still out training. Ruby had kept up a relatively cheerful front after the Breach but she couldn't fool Yang. Ruby blamed herself for the supposed failure. In hindsight, she could've used her speed to traverse the train and make it to the front, but that was months ago. Ruby hadn't slept after a long day of constant Grimm fighting and was low on aura from being roughed up after being taken prisoner. In frustrated Yang to no end that her efforts to convince Ruby of this were completely ineffectual. She lazily glanced at the clock before shooting up in bed.

"Oum it's late, that's it Ruby we're having a serious talk tomorrow," Yang muttered as she grabbed her coat and made her way out of the room. "Between Blake's white fang obsession, Weiss's studying, and now this you'd think we were all allergic to sleep or something." Summer was quickly approaching so it was warm enough the coat was just due to habit. Yang moved toward the training rooms on autopilot as she steamed over having to look over her teammates' sleep schedules at the expense of her own. Reaching the door broke Yang out of her reverie as she swiped her scroll across the terminal. Training rooms could only scheduled for entire teams so the door would open for any of the team. The door slid open easily releasing a tidal wave of rose petals into the hallway.

"... What," Yang said, too confused to keep her anger up, "Ruby?" She was only met by the soft hum of air conditioner. Slightly flaring her semblance, Yang began to burn through the petals to get into the room proper. After a full 5 minutes of burning and who knows how many petals gone up in smoke, Yang's confusion had only grown. "Ruby?" Yang yelled into the mountains of petals that seemed to fill the entire room. Yang pulled out her scroll and navigated to the team condition section to check Ruby's GPS, but was stopped by an alarming sight. Weiss's and Blake's aura's were full, her own was slightly diminished by using her semblance to burn petals, but Ruby's wasn't even showing up. Her mind flew to the worst. Ruby could be dead without a single inch of aura remaining. Her semblance flared larged, consuming petals at a vastly increased rate. The fire alarm went off from the smoke and the sprinklers began to pour down on her. Her normally precious hair was being ruined but she didn't even make a note of it. Ruby's GPS was somewhere in this room, and she would be found.

Glynda woke up to a notification of a fire in a training room reserved by team RWBY. Her opinion of RWBY was split. On one hand, they were extremely effective, certainly the best first year team and she could think of a few second year teams *cough USLS cough* they were probably better that, but my goodness they were always causing some sort of trouble. Regardless, she needed to go repair whatever they had done now at… 2 IN THE MORNING. "Alright, this better not be something stupid" She made her way towards the training hall but was much further away than Yang had been.

Yang's fire continued to burn brighter with every moment of not finding Ruby. There were just so many petals. The core of reason in Yang knew she had to stay angry, if she lost to hopelessness she wouldn't be able to reignite herself, and right now her flames were the best way to find Ruby. Years ago she had found that her semblance wouldn't harm people she cared about so Ruby wasn't in danger of being torched. Yang reached deep inside herself and flared her semblance to consume the entire room, flash igniting the remaining petals and revealing a slumped figure up against the side wall. With that final push Yang's fire went out and drained her completely, she crawled over toward Ruby to confirm that her baby sister was alright. If she wasn't…

Glynda was met with a strange scene when she finally arrived at the source of the alarm. Everything short of the walls and floor had been obliterated and Yang held Ruby in her arms sobbing. Yang's aura broadcast her emotions as being in relief while Ruby's aura was so depleted she could have been dead. "Excuse me, Ms. Xiao Long but what happened here?" Glynda decided that, at least to start, she would try to be gentle with the still conscious sister. "I-I came to check - I mean grab Ruby since it was so late, and I, well, there," Yang devolved into sobs for a moment before continuing "The whole room was full of rose petals and Ruby's aura was at 0 and she could've been dead but she's alright." Yang was gaining control of herself as she ordered the events in her mind. There was a long pause before Yang admitted, "I guess I was the one who, erm, broke all of the equipment" glancing at the scattered slag pools that marked the locations of the equipment. "I still don't know how Ruby got so low on aura or how the room filled with petals."

Glynda was quiet for a moment as she took the events in, before her eyes hardened, "Go back to your room Yang, I'll bring Ruby to the infirmary to make sure no damage was done. Once she's woken up I need to talk with her." Yang looked down at her sister, before drowsily agreeing.

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Ruby woke up feeling better than she had in a while, which probably meant she had overslept. She had probably stayed up too late last night as she couldn't remember cleaning up or returning to her dorm room. Did she have any classes today? Her head was throbbing too badly to even attempt to remember. "Ugh... I ought to get up," Ruby said to the (she assumed) empty room. She, therefore, wasn't prepared for the veritable wall of excited jabber and shouting that she received as a reaction.

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"Why do you think she did it?" Blake asked the various students assembled around Ruby's hospital bed. Team RWBY had remained gathered around Ruby's bed since Yang had woken up that morning and immediately run to check on her sister. Weiss and Blake had kept up a constant barrage of question ever since they had gotten the rough outline of the story. "She's going to tell us as soon as she wakes up," Weiss responded harshly. "I _think_ that she feels like she needs to do better and was doing some sort of training," Yang intervened trying to sound more confident than she was. "Ugh… I ought to get up"

Everyone froze.

"RUBY!" "YOU'RE AWAKE." "YOU HAD US SO WORRIED." Ruby lept out of bed with enough force to send the hospital bed flying across the room, slamming into the far wall and scattering her ecstatic teammates. "Ummm, what's going on?" Ruby asked. 3 mouths opened in tandem to answer but Weiss got the first word in.

"Do you have any idea how worried we've been. You can do serious damage to yourself with that kind of stupid stunt."

"I was-was just training, what do you mean?" Ruby was now looking at the floor and bumping her index fingers together; a telltale sign that she was nervous and a signal for Yang to take over the interrogation. "Ruby, I found you in a training room filled to the brim with rose petals and you completely drained of aura," Yang said in as calm a voice as she could manage. "I know what I'm doing; If I don't go all out I won't improve fast enough. People were hurt… it can't… I won't let it happen again," Ruby declared. "Sacrificing your own health and wellbeing won't help you protect anyone," Blake asserted. "How can you all be ok with this; Grimm got into the city because we weren't good enough, but Weiss and Blake still refuse to do strength training and Yang stil won't do any schoolwork. Our team needs to get better and I'm willing to do whatever it takes," with that Ruby disappeared from the room leaving a trail of rose petals. "Ruby wait!" Yang yelled to the now empty space. "A few white fang members tried this a few years ago, its called aura nuking. It consists of repeatedly bringing one's aura to absolute zero in order to increase maximum capacity. It often leads to injuries but almost never anything serious," Blake explained, "Unless anyone has a great idea to get her to stop, our best bet is probably to wait for her to burn out. She doesn't seem like a glutton for punishment." "You'd be surprised Blake, but I'll try talking to her again," Yang said.

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Really wanted this to be a oneshot, but it seemed to need more than one part. First fanfic so problems will be rampant and criticism is needed.

Thanks for reading.


	2. Devising their Plans

Disclaimer: I don't own Ruby, all rights are Roosterteeth and Monty's.

Thanks to CVLTTheDragonSlayer for pointing out that the partitions between segments didn't copy (took about 4 tries before I found that colons work) and for offering advice.

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The Xiao Long family was famous for their stubbornness, and unfortunately, despite the difference in last names, Ruby was no different. The brief conversation in the infirmary had revealed one thing that was a huge red flag to Yang: Ruby was doing this because it was, to her, "right." Ruby would charge into battle with a deathstalker and nevermore if it was "right" even if it was effectively suicide. It was one of the things Yang loved about her sister, that unwavering dedication to doing good, but it could be incredibly irritating. Clearly this situation was going to require careful planning and tactics; Yang confidently grabbed her Grimm Studies notebook and opened it to the blank first page to begin.

::3 minutes later with nothing written::

"Weiss, I need help with Ruby's situation," Yang called out to her white-themed friend. "Yang, can't you see tha," Weiss began, "Sorry. its been a long day; how can I help?" Yang waited a moment as Weiss put aside her own (actually note-filled) notebook and walked over. "I've got nothing," Yang said dejectedly, "I'm supposed to be good at this." "Well... maybe you should... you know Ruby better than I do..." Weiss replied. She waited a moment to collect herself before continuing. "Maybe you should just talk to her...?" Weiss said, trying to redeem herself but still not confident. Yang looked down at the floor, "Thanks Weiss, but I'll keep working on it." "Hey, just, just, you know Ruby better than I do," Weiss protested, "That's what we've always done up till now." Yang sighs and decides to explain, "Alright, don't tease Rubes about this alright." Weiss simply raises her eyebrows at Yang. Between Weiss and Yang, one of the two is clearly more likely to tease someone. "I know, just, I love this about her and don't want to ruin it," Yang started, "Ruby is still living in a fairy tale where the good guys always win. She needs to always do the right thing so she'll be one of the good guys, and somehow she's decided that doing this to herself is the right thing." Toward the end Yang was beginning to break down under the stress and despair in her own inability to help her precious sister. "It'll be alright Yang," Weiss said, "Ruby's a lot more intelligent than we give her credit for, she'll listen to her teammates." Yang looked up. "But," Weiss continued, "We should strategize; we just need to make her realize that what she's doing is wrong." "Let's do it," Yang replied, her spirit renewed.

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Blake had left to the library after Ruby had woken up, not comfortable with Yang potentially asking for help. She hadn't exactly been the most social and wouldn't be able to help. She sat down in a secluded corner she had found where there were bookshelves on 3 sides. The sheer height of the shelves kept the area dim and quiet. She opened up the new book she had gotten a few days prior and began to read. Blake truly was enjoying the book and was eager to proceed but she couldn't get into it. Her mind kept wandering to Ruby and remembering what happened to people when they would do that much for power. She gave up on that book and pulled out an old favorites. Opening to a random page, she tried again to lose herself in the world of high fantasy, powerful weapons, and dark secrets. Yet again, her mind refuses to drop the morning's events. She gave up and closed the book; she might not be confident in her ability to convince Ruby with words, but she would come up with something just in case Yang failed.

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Ruby was glad to have a day off from classes, but was determined to not let it go to waste. After the Breach she had done a lot of development on tactics and strategy. She started with herself, listing out her strengths and weaknesses. She was fast and maneuverable, at the expense of options and versatility. If her overwhelming speed couldn't overwhelm an opponent, she needed something else to swing the battle in her favor. Most of the time, she relied on team maneuvers: use one of Weiss's glyphs to make her shots freeze on impact and the like, but she would have to fight alone at times and couldn't always rely on that. She had tried giving her scythe a flamethrower; nearly destroyed her cape, next. She had tried learning some dust magic; she had never appreciated Weiss's knowledge so much, there was no way she could learn that. She might grab a book about glyph-binds though; they sounded possible. She was reading through some interviews with eminent hunters and noticed that many of them listed heavy snow or fog as one of the hardest unforeseen events to deal with during a hunt. The next day in her solo training she had begun work on a new aspect to her fighting style, using an aspect of her semblance that she ordinarily ignored. Each of the petals it gave off were intricately linked to her inner aura and, after a fashion, could be manipulated. She called the technique Rose Storm, a tornado of petals encircling her and her foes, blocking their vision while her connection to the flowers allowed her to know of everything that was within the area of effect. She had kept up the field for 2 hours last night, but was determined to hold it for longer today. She wouldn't fail the people she had sworn to protect again. Not with what was on the line if Ozpin was right.

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Blake reached the room to discover that Weiss and Yang have set up an elaborate… something. The walls are covered in papers, posters, and pictures of people with pins and strings connecting them. The duo doesn't appear to have even noticed that Blake has come in, despite her entrance tearing down half a craft store worth of string. "So… what's the plan?" Blake asks. "Huh, oh hey, Blake you're back," Yang replied. "We were a bit involved in this whole thing," She continues sheepishly. "We've got nothing," Weiss answers moving to clean up the string I knocked down trying to enter, "Especially since Yang stopped taking this seriously half an hour ago." "I am taking this seriously, you just need to relax Ruby isn't a math problem to be solved; I'm trying to come up with stuff," Yang shot back. "Sorry if I don't count gassing her training room as a legitimate suggestion!" Weiss shouted back, her frustration with the brawler reaching its limit. "Come on Weiss it was a joke." "Then you admit that you aren't taking this seriously!" "At least I'm contributing anything, all you've done is shut things down."

The two seemed to be inches away from putting more members of Team RWBY in the infirmary so Blake stepped in, "I might have something, but I don't know if it will work." "Huh," Yang broke her death stare with Weiss and looked at the ninja. "Well, from reading some of these papers scattered around you guys seem to be trying to convince her that the training isn't the right thing to do… at least before the less realistic proposals," Blake explained, "but Ruby's trying to become stronger right, if we wait for the tournament at the Vytal Festival and other people do better than her, it will prove that she doesn't need to hurt herself training." Weiss looked contemplative, while Yang just gaped at her. Without warning Yang lept forward to hug Blake, "You're a genius!" Weiss nodded in agreement. "Thanks," Blake gasped from within Yang's crushing hug. Releasing Blake, Yang continued, "This next week is going to be terrible, but we can talk to her after the tournament and explain that you don't need to hurt yourself." "We might want to train a bit more ourselves, to guarantee that she doesn't win," Weiss threw out. "Yeah, but Ruby can't find out," Blake added. "Agreed," Weiss concluded.

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Ruby was standing in the middle of a tornado of red, reading over and refining her notes on her teammates. She had started with herself, but had every intention of working with each of her teammates. Strengths and weaknesses, notes on their semblances, physical stats: all listed out on lines of notebook paper. Tomorrow, she had planned with Ozpin to have them join her on her extra training ostensibly to make sure she didn't hurt herself again, but actually so that she could start using her finding to help them. Tonight was the last time she could push herself to the very end, so she returned focus to the storm and began reshaping it and altering the density at random. She wasn't looking forward to worrying all of her teammates again by knocking herself out but it would make Ozpin's declaration more believable. Hopefully, they wouldn't be too mad, but some things needed to be done.

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Thanks for reading and please review. Started to add plot into this since the first was supposed to be a one-shot and didn't have any serious plot threads set up. Hope everyone enjoys.


	3. Revealing the Consequences

Disclaimer: I don't own RWBY. All rights belong to Roosterteeth and Monty Oum.

This story was only changed to T for safety, since the rating system explanation is quite vague and I don't want to do anything wrong. I was told that fight scenes (which I plan on using at some point) need a T rating so I'm going to swap it over now.

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Yang went to bed that night with Ruby still gone. She reluctantly agreed that Ruby needed to be able to do her training in order to prove that it didn't work and nothing would be gained by staying up herself. Still it was with a heavy heart that she turned off her scroll for the night. "I hope she's alright," she said to the empty air, her teammates knowing there was nothing more to say.

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Ozpin's scroll dinged as Ruby's aura fell to 0. She would probably be discovered soon, and if not, no harm done. All the infirmary was offering was a place to lie down, and the flowers provided the same thing. Still it would make life easier if she was found, perhaps he should generically call for the area to be cleaned tonight by Team CRDL for their latest detention… Hmmm. No, it would seem a bit unseemly to call in a favor from Glynda so suddenly, and discovering Ruby would certainly raise Glynda's suspicions. "It appears that this will be left to fate," Ozpin concluded, taking a sip of his coffee. One way or another, he was going to ask Team RWBY to supervise Ruby's solo training, and Ruby would attempt to get the to join her. Based on their response they would either join Ruby or be kept in the normal program.

Very few individuals understood the true cost of the Breach. The true threat of the Grimm wasn't the Beowolves and Ursa or even the Nevermore and Deathstalkers; it was their sickness. Grimm's mere presence tainted the land and claimed it, so to speak. Perhaps marked would be a better word for it. With dust and aura, the Grimm weren't a threat and could be easily pushed back; the Orochi was another story. It was a colossal Grimm-like creature in the form of a many-headed dragon that seemed to be impervious to attack. Grimm marked the land for the Orochi to reclaim. Ozpin truly hated pushing Ruby into such an important role, but he needed as many powerful hunters as possible and she was pure of purpose. He doubted her teammates' resolve, but he would leave Ruby to the task of proving them.

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Ruby woke up feeling comfortable after a good night's sleep. She wondered how long it would take to get out of the infirmary this time. Keeping very still so as to not alert anyone watching her, she slightly opened one eye and was met by the high ceiling of the training room. "I'm surprised I'm not sore without the infirmary; these petals make a great bed," she noticed, "These work way better than the dorm beds." She'd have to find a small room somewhere… nah, she'd just make a pile somewhere. Ack! She had stayed out of the dorm all night and no one had found her. Yang would panic if she woke up with her still gone, the janitors would have her head if she left a room with this much flora, Ozpin didn't have a reason to have her team supervise; this was a disaster. "What to do, What to do?" Ruby demanded of the open air. She could go to the dorm and mollify Yang, get rid of the petals to help the cleaners, or play unconscious till she was found so Ozpin's request would be less strange. She had but a moment to decide before she was forced to choose secret option D. None of the Above.

The door to the room slid open to reveal Blake walking in backwards.

"Yang, you need to calm down; Ruby will be fine," Blake comforted, "You're just going to make this harder."

"She was out cold all night in a training room! Anything could've happened!" Yang roared back at her.

Ruby winced at the worry and hurt in her sister's voice.

"Yang, keep calm," Blake demanded.

Weiss stuck her head in the door and was the first to notice Ruby. Ruby waved quietly, now completely ashamed and staring at the floor.

"You guys realize…" Weiss began.

"Ruby's got some stupid idea in her head that she needs to do stupid suicidal training thing, and I'm not going to calm down till she stops!" Yang's roar fading to pleading as she spoke.

"...Ruby's right there," Weiss finished in a louder tone.

Yang whipped around and spotted her sister standing in the middle of the room, flower petals still clinging to her clothes and bunched in her hood. Yang's eyes visibly filled with relief, leading Ruby to slightly lift her gaze. However, with Yang's fears about Ruby's safety abated, her eyes quickly turned to a redder hue of violet. Ruby knew Yang wouldn't hurt her, but Yang was still terrifying with her semblance active.

Ruby tried to apologize, "Yang, I'm sorry; I just needed to… help..." She stopped as she realized that she couldn't tell anyone, especially her team. She guessed she hadn't slept that well after all, "Can I have a nap and then talk about this?"

Yang looked as though she was debated it fiercely in her head, but her white-haired teammate didn't have any hesitation. "No. Two days in a row," Weiss held up two fingers, "We've found you unconscious. Yesterday, we trusted you to not repeat this, but today you're going to talk."

"Wellll," Ruby realized something, "I didn't get knocked out, I just fell asleep. And, it's not like you guys actually checked on me. I was just going all night to help my endurance." Ruby realized she had messed up again; as important as it was to avoid being murdered by her team, she had knocked herself out specifically so she would be caught. "No, I did beat myself up too much, I didn't fall asleep normally."

Yang knew her sister better than anyone. They had shared everything for years, from the little stuff that happened during the day to the most important secrets, and this strange conversation was revealing something quickly. Ruby was hiding something that was important enough for her to lie about... Ruby had been scattered enough she wasn't even sure which line might be the lie.

Weiss continued on the warpath, oblivious to Yang's thoughts. "So talk," she imperiously demanded.

Blake, however, noticed Yang's sudden dropout from the conversation. "What's wrong Yang," Blake quietly asked, making sure the other two didn't notice.

"I'm not sure," Yang said loudly, making sure the other two did notice, "Why don't we ask Ruby?"

"andthat'swhy | Huh?" Ruby was broken out of her rambling hole-filled explanation.

"Have you been paying any attention, that's what I just did. And all I got was gibberish!" Weiss said, a good deal louder than she had intended.

"Are you going to tell me what happened Ruby? What's going on here? I love you Ruby, and would never hurt you." Yang quietly asked.

Ooooh, Yang was fighting dirty; Ruby's resolve came a hair away from breaking. "Yang... friends, will you join me? We can get better if we try, and I, or we if you guys are there too, won't go too far again; I promise," Ruby pleaded.

"What's wrong Ruby?" Yang asked in response, continuing her soft motherly tone, "Why won't you tell me?"

Weiss thought she understood, and suddenly saw her leader in a new light. Her father had done and suggested similar severe trainings that she had undergone before entering Beacon. They were hard, painful, and nothing she relished returning to. Her scar twinged to punctuate her point. No one could discount such method's effectiveness, however. After all, it had brought her from a dainty girl who could barely lift a dumbbell, to a potent mage on one of the world's most promising first year teams. Ruby's perseverance had gotten into Beacon a full two years early and at a higher rank than Weiss.

"I'll join her in the training room during her extra sessions," Weiss said, keeping her voice free of emotion, "If nothing else it will stop a repeat and stop her from doing anything truly dangerous."

"Thanks, Weiss!" Ruby squealed, returned to her usual exuberance.

Blake was taken aback by how cold Weiss's voice had gotten, but was willing to simply spy on the situation as it unfolded rather than make more of an issue now.

Yang was still mad, but the anger was now diluted with grief at Ruby not telling her anything. Her mind was in shock: "Where did we start to seperate? Should I have made sure to not imply we should be on different teams? Should I have been more attentive? Was I too overbearing?" her mind repeated to her, drawing on her deepest fears. In that moment, she just needed to cry somewhere private and alone.

Weiss felt the military precision and unwavering dedication that had so characterized her childhood returning to her mind. She had lightened up at Beacon, and had enjoyed it to a degree she wouldn't soon admit. However, Ruby had broken that reverie. She was a Schnee. Schnees were perfect. She would keep her team leader safe, thereby being the perfect teammates, and improve her own fighting, thereby being the perfect student.

"I assume we will keep up your usual schedule of extra training each night at 8:00?" Weiss asked.

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Blake left shortly after Weiss agreed to join Ruby, then doubled back to watch the rest of the conversation. She could debate the morality of her actions, but just asking clearly got nowhere and she didn't trust Weiss's motivations. Yang was demonstrably an open book, and Ruby always looked like she was inches away from a breakdown whenever she hid anything. Weiss on the other hand, had been trained in diplomacy and could keep a poker face like a master. However, Weiss didn't realize that she only showed her poker face when hiding things. Weiss's voice freezing over and her sudden 180 of pace meant Weiss had to be included in this web of mystery. "Why can't we ever have a boring normal day?" Blake muttered as Ruby and Weiss began to leave, having learned nothing about either of her teammates' secrets. Who to continue following... Ruby seemed to have the more important secret, Blake would follow her.

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Ruby was overjoyed that Weiss was willing to try practicing with her. Sure Weiss (as far as Ruby knew) wasn't doing it to really push herself, but Ruby would figure something out to change it. She was on her way to Ozpin's office to update him on the morning's events. Ruby wanted advice for Weiss's training and to talk about changing the earlier plan of asking Ruby's team to supervise her. She used her password on the terminal before Ozpin's door and was allowed in.

So, Ozpin was involved in whatever made Ruby train till she couldn't stay conscious. That certainly complicated matters. "Good, this wasn't complicated enough," Blake sarcastically whispered to herself. Should she let Ozpin know that she knew something? Heck, should she even let Yang or Weiss know? Yang definitely not; Blake would rather have a living headmaster for the time being. Blake would need to find out Weiss motivations in this before she told Weiss anything. Since she couldn't spy on the inside of the headmaster's office, Blake returned to her dorm. She'd have to wait till the training session to learn anything more.

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Review Responses:

Inkly: Can do. Hopefully this cleans things up.

Natural Born Flamer: If you mean the story is too short, well, here's another part; it'll probably be around 10ish parts when it's completed. Having said that, it would not surprise me if my outline gets thrown out. If you mean per chapter, I'm intentionally keeping these short so that I can get and then react to feedback; sorry.

I decided to move review responses to the bottom of the text so that it doesn't get in the way of people who like to skip author notes.

Sorry for the delay, one paragraph of this chapter took longer than the entire first chapter. Which one you ask? All of them. I have an ominous feeling that isn't going to change as I move forward.

As always, thanks for reading and please review. Hope everyone enjoys.


	4. Starting the Training

Disclaimer: I don't own RWBY, all rights are owned by Roosterteeth and Monty Oum.

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As Ozpin was sitting down for a late breakfast after a stressful staff meeting regarding Professor Peach's attendance issue when he received a message from Ruby, "Excuse me sir, but if you could please return to your office at your lesure that would be most appreciated." Chuckling at how she had obviously spent a long time trying to make that sound official yet still managed to misspell leisure, he grabbed his spartan breakfast and exited the cafeteria.

He reached his office and found Ruby staring wide-eyed at the network of gears in the floor. He cleared his throat lightly to get her attention.

"Ah, sorry I just wasn't sure what they did," Ruby said, rubbing the back of her neck.

"And you figured it out?" Ozpin asked.

"Um… no?" Ruby replied.

"Tell me when you do," Ozpin requested.

Ruby looked visibly disappointed that he hadn't told her the purpose of all the gears but pressed on with her reason for meeting him, " I met with my team this morning. I had already woken up, but they came in to demand I stop training so hard." She paused to gauge Ozpin's reaction, but he was as unreadable as ever. "We talked and argued for a bit, but it was alright because Weiss agreed to join me in the future," Ruby concluded.

"What about Blake and Yang?" Ozpin asked.

"They didn't offer, but I plan on talking to them once me and Weiss have made some real progress," Ruby replied.

"Don't do anything drastic Ruby; we still have a couple years if everything follows the normal schedule," Ozpin pressed.

"There's something else I wanted to talk about too," Ruby said. "If that's alright, and you don't have anywhere to be or anything," Ruby quickly added.

Ozpin glanced at the clock, 10:40, later than he thought but still early. He had to talk to General Ironwood at lunch but he still had a couple hours. He nodded his assent.

"We're preparing to stop the 'Orochi' right, professor?" Ruby questioned. Ozpin nodded again. "What is that exactly? Our textbooks say its the ancestor of the King Taiju and doesn't exist anymore." Ruby explained.

Ozpin looked over the young huntress. She was a very open young girl; one that he had doubted could keep their set-up a secret. He had great reservations when choosing her as a candidate, despite her team's overwhelming efficacy. If she had told someone that she was being moved into a higher program, he would be investigated and told off but ultimately the investigation would turn up nothing incriminating. Knowing details about the Orochi would make that investigation far more complete and possibly land Ruby in a tragic accident. Ozpin rubbed his temples. Ruby was looking worried and seemed to be about to retract her question when Ozpin finally spoke, "I'll tell you, but this must not leave this room."

"I won't tell anyone," Ruby swore.

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Yang was still surrounded by an air of utter despair when Blake arrived at the dorm room. Blake wasn't ever as good with emotion or people as either of the sisters, but she could still recognize something as obvious as this. Weiss, however, seemed to be totally ignoring her teammate's plight, cleaning her rapier at her desk. As much as Blake would have loved, would have adored, simply to open her book and lose herself in the simple problems of the protagonists, she had a duty to keep her team sane. No one else seemed to be capable of filling that role for the time being.

"So what's the plan now?" Blake began.

Yang looked at her blankly and Weiss continued to clean her weapon. "What do you mean?" Yang finally asked.

"Now that Weiss is going to be joining Ruby do we want to change our plan of action to get Ruby to stop hurting herself," Blake clarified.

"That's why I'm joining her, that's already been addressed," Weiss said curtly.

Crap. Blake had completely missed that. Yang helping her sister would break her out of her helplessness but that wasn't going to work anymore. Hm... This whole motivating people thing was really not Blake's strong suit. "Do you want to have a sparring match?" Blake tried.

"Sure," Weiss replied. "WHY?" Blake thought, "WHY CAN NOTHING GO RIGHT?" One last ditch effort, "Do you want to come Yang?" Blake asked.

"Nah, have fun guys," Yang replied.

Her motivation efforts thoroughly foiled by Weiss, Blake left the room for a sparring match.

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"There is a lot of speculation about the origins of the Orochi, but unfortunately that's all it is: speculation. There is however, a lot we do know about this Grimm. The Orochi is a massive Grimm that attacks from underground. It resembles a many-headed dragon. Each head is the size of a fully grown Ursa and is armed with a poison that directly targets aura," Ozpin paused to make sure that Ruby understood what that meant.

"The creature tunnels toward its target, setting off multiple earthquakes prior to its arrival. It breaks through whatever fortifications its target has and," He stopped as Ruby raised her hand to ask a question, "... Yes?"

"What do you mean the fortifications of its target, do hunters have to use a special armor against it?" Ruby asked, hoping she was going to get to see new hunting equipment.

"The Orochi attacks cities. Not people," Ozpin said solemnly, "after breaching the defenses the Orochi releases other Grimm from various cavities on its body, whether it grows them or they are merely riding is unknown. No settlement has yet survived the onslaught. The settlements that focused on the Orochi itself were quickly overrun by the lesser Grimm. The cities that focused on controlling the lesser Grimm were crushed by the Orochi 1 by 1. If everything goes according to plan, normal hunters and huntresses will be working on the regular Grimm while a few teams, possibly including your own, will be specifically trained against the Orochi."

"And the Orochi's goal is to claim any land that has been touched by Grimm," Ruby said unexpectedly. "All of Vale is in danger because I couldn't stop the train."

"No, Ruby," Ozpin began.

"I've looked into this a bit too, everything that the Orochi attacked had accidentally had a Grimm break in a couple years before," Ruby was glaring at him, daring him to try and explain it otherwise.

Ozpin hated himself in that moment, but lying would only make it worse when she did find out. "Yes, that is what happens," Ozpin confirmed.

"Thank you, for helping me," Ruby said, tears of self-blame brimming in her eyes. She left Ozpin's office.

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Ruby started heading towards her dorm room after the talk with Ozpin, but couldn't bring herself to face her teammates. In her heart, she believed that she had doomed all of Vale because she wasn't strong enough, fast enough, or smart enough. She went to library, knowing that Blake always hung out at the same table if she was here at all. Ruby could easily avoid the rest of her team and work on what Weiss and her were going to do for training that night.

Ruby brought out a Dust 201 Book in hopes of finding something to do that night. There was only so much that could be accomplished with such a rigidly constructed style such as fencing so Ruby firmly believed that the way for Weiss to improve was through dust. Plus Ruby would love to find something that she could do with Dust. Advanced Dust Vaunting: first page consists entirely of math so complicated it might as well be rocket science, next; Dust Lancing: Ruby wasn't willing to be a test subject for something that sounded that painful, plus Weiss already has a melee weapon; Dust Animation: among the most complicated dust manipulations possible... probably best to do something else. This wasn't working. Ruby kept flipping pages at random, not expecting to find anything. Ruby finally opened to the page on Glyph-Binding. In glyph-binding a specific dust spell could be grafted onto a person's aura. The glyph could then be cast at the cost of aura as many times at the user wanted. It was even easier than normal casting due to the lack of the speed combat demanded. Weiss should be able to do it without issue. Even Ruby stood a good chance of being successful. There was, however, one major drawback. If the person who was creating the glyph messed up at any point than it could have terrible side effects. Very few would dare to risk it. Ruby bookmarked the page and decided to talk to Weiss about it, just hypothetically, and see how she reacted.

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Blake was extremely tired from the sparring match with Weiss. Weiss's ranged combat was fearsome and unpredictable, forcing Blake to throw up shadow clones near constantly. Weiss had won in the end, but it had been a very close match. Upon returning to her dorm room, Blake found herself unable to resist the siren call of her soft bed and fell asleep.

Blake woke up very late that afternoon, ironically it was approaching time to go to sleep. She did still have a couple hours though. Blake languidly surveyed the room. Yang was working on some homework. Ruby and Weiss were gone. "Hey Yang, where'd Weiss and Ruby go?" Blake sleepily asked.

"They went to go train about half an hour ago," Yang responded.

"Alright, I've got to go... um, library," Blake said, now woken up. She had missed the beginning of the training session but probably hadn't missed anything important yet.

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"Alright Weiss, welcome to the first day of our training together," Ruby said excitedly.

"Do you have anything special planned for the occasion?" Weiss asked sarcastically.

"Yep," Ruby said, "I grabbed a bunch of books on dust and found something called glyph-binding, which is supposed to be super easy and help both of us." Ruby proudly grabbed the library book out of her pack and passed it to Weiss.

While Weiss began to read the small section, Ruby warmed up. She jogged the room's track several times, did a couple sets of pushups, and stretched. Weiss still hadn't finished reading through the couple pages. Maybe Weiss was just a slow reader.

Weiss was unsure what to think of what she had just read. It was absolutely something she could do, no problem. She made glyphs in seconds all the time so one more should be no issue. She would go slower to make sure that every single line and detail was perfect, but it still wouldn't be difficult. Ruby had gotten to better than her with 2 entire years less experience, Weiss wasn't going to give up on the first hurdle of Ruby's training. "Alright, I'll go first," Weiss said.

"Really Weiss?" Ruby sounded happy but mostly surprised. She hadn't expected Weiss to just, agree.

"Yes and I'll go first since I am better at dust manipulation," Weiss reasoned. Did Ruby not think that Weiss would've been willing to have a bit of risk in order to become stronger? Her own father had sent a Atlesian Paladin to duel her; she had been through far worse.

"Alright, I had a few ideas for what glyph you might choose," Ruby began, pulling out her notebook, "I figured that the main time you would need these is when you are unable to use your normal dust supplies and presumably don't have your weapon. With this in mind I think that Attraction so that you could get your weapon back, or Ice so that you could buy yourself time by freezing the enemy or yourself."

Weiss was actually impressed with how much thought had clearly gone into this; Weiss wanted to do something else just to prove that she knew more about glyphs than Ruby but was forced to admit that Ruby had indeed found the best candidates. She grabbed a high quality ice crystal and hesitantly began.

She made the first circle of the glyph on her upper arm, the dust stinging her skin. She didn't let it distract her and pressed on into the large fixtures of the glyph. Ruby was watching on totally enthralled. The dust was flowing into Weiss's skin and turning the area it touched into ice. Weiss chose to make the glyph focus around the strength of the ice so that it could hold targets for as long as possible at the expense of range and efficiency. Weiss lost track of time as she wrote, entirely absorbed in the creation of the glyph. Upon completion, Weiss looked at her handiwork. A tiny symbol of ice was just below her shoulder blade. She would have to wear longer sleeves to hide it, no sense letting her enemies know what she was capable of.

Seeing that Weiss had completed her glyph, Ruby grabbed some Acceleration dust. There was no other option when Ruby was considering what dust she would use. Weiss saw that Ruby was about to begin and stopped her, "Do you want me to do it? I can probably do a better job than you can."

"That would be great, I was really nervous," Ruby admitted and passed the crystal to her teammate.

"What kind of modifications do you want?" Weiss asked.

"Duration isn't very important since I can use my semblance for everyday events. Probably get as much power as you can," Ruby suggested.

"Speed is cheap enough I could probably make the glyph basically free to use if you wanted to go the opposite, but I can make it really big but expensive if that's what you would prefer," Weiss explained.

Ruby considered, "Everyone would know that I had a glyph but it would also probably be more useful… I think… Yeah, I'll use your version."

"Alright, now sit still; I don't want to mess this up," Weiss said.

Weiss began to create the glyph-bind on Ruby's arm, once again starting with the outer circle and major features of the symbol.

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Blake arrived at the training room and intended to quietly slip into the room and then vanish into the rafters. When the occupants were engaged in combat, there was no way that she would be noticed. The sounds of bullets firing and blades clashing drowned out her quiet footfalls and the tunnelvision of 1 on 1 combat meant no one would notice her entrance. Unfortunately for her, she didn't pause outside the door to notice that the training room was completely silent as Weiss created Ruby's glyph-bind. Blake opened the door and was partway through her jump into the rafters when Ruby began to scream.

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As with everything Weiss did she kept a laser focus on the task at hand. Her world was entirely consumed by her current occupation, which made her very efficient and effective. However, also like a laser, Weiss's focus could be easily broken by outside interference. Weiss was beginning to work on the first cheapen glyph radical when Blake entered, and she turned to look. Her hand twitch upward, carving a new line that wouldn't fit into any glyph that Weiss knew. Weiss immediately realized her mistake and desperately tried to continue into a glyph of some kind but failed to think of anything. The dust that was being used by the glyph destabilized and went haywire, tearing through everything around it. Ruby screamed in pain, and then fell unconscious for the third night in a row. Weiss fainted and Blake ran over. Blake, clueless as to what happened but knowing that Ruby was hurt, saw that Ruby's arm appeared to be made entirely of rigid dust crystal. "Wha…"

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Review Responses:

Natural Born Flamer: Hopefully this explained the Orochi a bit better. It's the first entirely new thing that I added to this story, so I didn't realize how much I had been relying on everyone's prior knowledge of the actual show. Hopefully I did a better job with glyph-binding.

Everyone is doing different things in different places at the same time, which is hard to write down in a way that actually makes sense. I really tried to make sure the timeline was clear. Sorry this ended up so long, I couldn't find a good spot to end it so it just kept going. It still ended up somewhat cliffhanger-ish even with all of the extra length. As always, thanks for reading and please review. Hope everyone enjoys.


	5. Discovering the Damages

Disclaimer: I don't own RWBY, all rights are owned by Roosterteeth and Monty Oum.

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To her shame, Blake's first instinct was to find out what had occurred rather than helping her clearly injured leader. Blake grabbed her scroll and began to dial the infirmary, before deciding to do something slightly different. Ozpin was somehow connected to this, Blake knew and he would be able to get help just as fast as the infirmary could respond. It wasn't wrong if she gained something in the process, right? She selected Beacon's headmaster from her contacts and set the call as an emergency so that it would be marked as high priority.

Ring...

Ring...

"Hello Miss Belladonna," Ozpin said.

"Professor, you need to come to training room B1 immediately; something's wrong with Ruby. I don't know how serious it is but it looks bad," Blake answered.

"What happened?" Ozpin demanded, his calm demeanor barely holding.

"You'd best see it for yourself, its some sort of dust injury but I haven't seen any like it before. I really hope its nothing serious, but her arm... you'll know a lot more than I do," Blake explained.

"Does Weiss recognize it?" Ozpin asked, already grabbing his coffee mug and standing up.

"Weiss is unconscious as well but appears to be fine, though I haven't really checked," Blake admitted.

"I'm on my way," Ozpin said, hanging up the scroll as he exited his office. Politely ending the call would have been a waste of time.

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Blake wasn't phased when Ozpin hung up on her. She appreciated that he hadn't delayed her teammates' treatment. With help on the way, Blake decided to do what she could to determine the nature and severity of her team's injuries. Weiss appeared to be far simpler, so Blake began with her. She was breathing normally, no lacerations, no broken bones. There were a couple bruises but they were nothing uncommon for a huntress-in-training. Weiss appeared to have just fainted; though she would leave Ozpin to come to his own conclusions. Ruby's problem was more obvious, but also completely incomprehensible. Ruby's right arm was made of volatile dust. Even standing a few feet away Blake could feel the dust reacting to her aura. Blake moved further away so as to avoid accidently doing something that could worsen the situation. As Blake reached this conclusion, Ozpin arrived.

Similarly to Blake, Ozpin began by examining Weiss, though he did so with a first aid kit. After a couple moments of examination, he attached a small pad to Weiss's forehead. "Blake, keep an eye on Weiss. This should wake her up pretty quickly, so tell me if she starts to stir," Ozpin requested.

"Yes, sir," Blake said.

Ozpin put away the simple first-aid kit and grabbed a more specialized kit from his coat. He moved over to Ruby and grabbed her crystalline arm. Ozpin murmured something to himself that even Blake's faunus hearing couldn't catch and attempted to invoke the dust with his own aura. Seeing no reaction, Ozpin grabbed a few pinches of loose dust from the kit and sprinkled it on her arm. Ruby's arm jerked into a new position, causing Blake to flinch.

"Blake, grab a longsleaved shirt and a pair of gloves for Ruby," Ozpin requested, putting another pad on Ruby's forehead.

"Huh, how's that going to help?" Blake asked.

"Ruby is stable and there's nothing I can do to improve her condition. In the mean time I intend to help Ruby hide her affliction while she adjusts," Ozpin answered.

"What happened to her?" Blake asked, "Can she still be a huntress?"

"It would appear that she attempted to bind an acceleration glyph to herself. The dust is meant to be infused with the body in a very strictly controlled manner, but something went wrong leading to the dust spreading violently to the rest of her arm. Her arm is mostly inert so it won't blow up, but it is probable that Ruby won't ever learn to use the arm with enough finesse to use a weapon. Any other questions?" Ozpin asked, naturally slipping into his role as an educator.

"What's Ruby going to have to do? Is there any way her team can help her?" Blake said.

"Ruby's arm doesn't seem to react to aura so it has to be reshaped through the careful application of dust. I can't think of any way to efficiently do that in battle, but Ruby is a very creative and dedicated individual; I'm sure Ruby will come up with a solution," Ozpin clarified, "For example, when I used high purity healing dust on the arm to test the reaction it bent at the elbow by 10 degrees. Different purities and dust types would elicit different positions."

"There's no way you can even function, must less fight like that!" Blake gasped. She remembered her discovery that Ozpin was somehow related to Ruby's overzealous training and lashed out, "You pushed her to knock herself out the past couple days and now to do this. How could you!?"

A look of guilt briefly flashed across Ozpin's normally inexpressive face, "Ruby's training was her own decision."

"Then why do you feel guilty?" Blake pressed her advantage.

"Can you get Ruby a long sleeved shirt and gloves so that we can move her back to her room?" Ozpin requested, his calm demeanor firmly reestablished.

"This conversation is not over, and you will remain in this room," Blake stated, imitating Weiss's authoritarian tone.

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Blake slipped into the dorm and was immediately confronted by an eager Yang. "So what are Ruby and the Ice Queen doing tonight?" Yang asked.

"They were. Hey I never told you I was watching them, Blake protested.

"You discovered that Ruby and Weiss were gone, said you were going to the library, and ran out of the room," Yang responed, "Not even you get that excited about going to the library; you were clearly spying on them..." Blake ignored Yang and started digging through Ruby's disorganized clothes heap. "So what were they doing, Blake; don't leave me hanging."

As much as it would have been easier for Blake to simply lie to Yang; Blake was really tired of being secretive and she badly needed an ally.

"Yang, Ruby has been hurt badly; Ozpin has something to do with it but he dodged my question. I'd like..." Blake said.

"How badly?" Yang interrupted, chopping her sentence to hold control.

Yang's eyes began to turn red when Blake hesitated in answering. "Ruby's arm is; It'd be easier if you just come with me. You can see Ruby and try to extort an answer from the headmaster," Blake replied.

"Lead the way," Yang said darkly.

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A couple minutes after Blake left, Weiss woke up from the pad Ozpin had applied. As Weiss was still recovering her memories of the events that led up to her improptu nap, she sat up and saw Ozpin. "Sorry Ozpin, I shouldn't have slept in the training room and accept whatever punishment that entails," Weiss said.

Ozpin glanced at her, "Ah, you're awake Weiss. Given the circumstances I don't think any punishment is necessary. Do you remember what happened to Ruby?"

"Something happened to Ruby?" Weiss finally stood up and moved over to where Ruby lay. A few steps later, her memories caught up to her. Weiss shuddered and stopped where she stood. "Ruby had found a technique called glyph-binding," Weiss began, stopping to see if she needed to explain the process.

"Please continue, I figured as much," Ozpin said.

"I went first and made an ice-glyph," Weiss said, quickly revealing the barely visible white dust symbol, "I began on giving Ruby an acceleration glyph that was built for sustained usage. I heard the door open and flinched." Weiss wanted nothing more than to hang her head, but her Schnee legacy demanded she face her actions with her head held high. "It created a line that couldn't be used in any glyph I knew of. Ruby screamed and I passed out." Weiss felt a tear run down her cheek. "I don't know what happened after that, but from what I read th... there..." Weiss cut herself off before she started gibbering. "Please tell me she's okay. This is all my fault if she's not. Please," Weiss said desperately.

Ozpin simply looked at the heiress. "Blake, Yang; is there anything you need clarified?"

Weiss turned around to see her teammates, but couldn't bring herself to meet thier gaze.

"No, I heard it all," Yang answered. The entire room lightened slightly when Yang wasn't furious... yet.

"Ruby's injuries are severe. Her arm has crystallized into inert acceleration dust. It is completely immobile but can be moved by specific applications of dust. Ruby will have to drastically rework her fighting style to overcome this disability if she will continue as a huntress. I, however, have every expectation that Ruby is up to the task," Ozpin explained.

"There's no way Ruby will be able to fight at all," Blake interjected, right as Ruby woke up.

"No, I can still fight! What happened?" Ruby exclaimed leaping to her feet. Discovering that she couldn't use her main arm to balance, she was sent crashing to the ground again. "Ow."

"Ruby, you're going to be okay; don't listen to Blake," Yang said as she ran over, "You're going to be okay, just sleep for now."

"My arm won't move Yang, I can just rotate it," Ruby responded, rolling her shoulder blade. "I'm not sleeping now," Ruby said, her expression turning sour.

"You can use dust to move it Ruby, you'll be fine," Weiss responded, shrinking back when both Yang and Blake glared at her.

"You can't talk Weiss, this is your fault. As soon as Ruby is alright, I'll deal with you," Yang said. For a moment it looked as though Weiss was going to respond, but she thought better of it.

"Yang, this isn't Weiss's fault; I was the one who suggested trying this," Ruby said as she stood up, "I'm going to go and find a new weapon. There's no way I can use Crescent Rose with just my bad hand." Ruby closed her eyes in an effort to stop herself from crying.

"You can use loose dust to move your arm Ruby, but I'm not sure how to find out what each combination of dust types will do," Blake told Ruby. Ruby was nearly out the door before Blake remembered, "If you want to, I brought long sleeves and gloves if you want to hide your arm."

"Thanks, but its alright. People would find out eventually either way," Ruby responded. With that, she left the room.

The door closed behind the team's leader as she headed toward the smithy. The first order of business was to create something to apply dust to her arm in specific quantities with as little input as possible from Ruby herself.

Back in the training room, Weiss and Ozpin found Blake and Yang glaring at them, both preparing a battery of questions.

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Review Response:

FOODninja-321: Thanks, hopefully this lived up to expectations.

I guess these are just going to be longer per chapter than I originally planned; this one was originally slated to have twice as much content. Given the choice between 2 1800ish word chapters and 1 nearly 4000 word chapter I chose the first option. I'm not sure if this a sign that I'm getting better at writing dialogue or that I'm getting worse at pacing. As always, thanks for reading and please review. Hope everyone enjoys.


	6. Facing the Aftermath

Disclaimer: I don't own RWBY, all rights reserved to Roosterteeth and Monty Oum.

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Ruby walked slowly to the smithy. She was deep in thought, brainstorming and throwing out various overarching designs. "The most important thing is that I can use it instantly," Ruby said. She thought better when she was speaking out loud, and since no one was around there was no harm in doing so. "I wonder if I could use an aura trigger... No that wouldn't work, I need to be able to control what dust is used," Ruby continued. Aura triggers were basically on/off switches that activated whenever aura was flared in their vicinity. Ruby had a sickening feeling that she was going to need electronics to get the precision and variety of response that she needed, but she didn't want to bring in someone she else on the project. Ruby wasn't a prideful girl, but she didn't want anyone to see just how helpless she was without her main arm. The logical part of her told her that she should get help now rather than waiting till anyone who could help was asleep, but Ruby wanted to try for a mechanical solution.

Ruby grabbed a pad of drafting paper and a variety of pencils before setting up at one of the work tables in the room. She held a pencil in her left hand, poised over the paper, but she continued to work in her head. Ruby made sure she knew roughly what she was going to make before she started writing anything. Ruby was still pondering the trigger; it needed pinpoint precision, rapid response, and a hair trigger. Hm... Ruby seized upon an idea; it was old tech and not that easy to find. Maybe an old weapon in the examples will have one.

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Blake and Yang quickly decided to split their questioning and discuss the results afterwards. Yang and Weiss returned to the dorm room, leaving Blake and Ozpin in the training room.

"Do you want to move this to my office, Blake?" Ozpin asked.

Blake was already realizing that she wasn't going to be able to rely on body language and subconscious clues as much as she usually did. Professor Ozpin wasn't as unflappable as he appeared, but he didn't let on much. Detecting no ulterior motive in Ozpin's voice, Blake responded, "That would probably be more comfortable."

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"Sit down Weiss," Yang commanded, pointing at the bed.

Weiss obliged, but noticed that Yang remained standing. "Are you going to sit down as well, or is this a power thing where you stand over me?" Weiss asked.

"Well, um, no I was just. Hey, I'm the one who's supposed to be asking questions," Yang responded. In hindsight, it should have been pretty obvious that Weiss would recognize psychological techniques like that, but Yang was still disappointed that she didn't get to use the one thing she paid attention to in her Intro to Psychology class.

Weiss was considerably more relaxed than she had been a few moments ago. Walking over to the dorm seemed to have calmed Yang down, and Weiss had managed to take the upper hand early. "Do you know what you're planning to ask Yang?" Weiss said, messing with her would be inquisitor.

"No... Its pretty obvious though isn't it? I'm going to ask what happens and then get details?" Yang responded. Why couldn't Weiss be some random person she'd never see again? Then Yang could stick to her tried and true tactics of "beat him/her up until he/she will never come back."

Weiss wanted to laugh so badly. This was worse than the substitute diplomacy teachers she got when her main tutor went on vacation; Yang was asking her how to conduct an interrogation, during the interrogation. "It's a starting point, maybe you should think about it and come back tomorrow," Weiss suggested.

"Nope, we're going to do this tonight princess," Yang said, "Alllll night, if you want to." Yang winked and rose her eyebrows to punctuate the second statement. Weiss saw the innuendo, but didn't want to encourage Yang. If Yang got started, Weiss would have to endure jokes and puns along those lines for the rest of the night. Disappointed that Weiss hadn't reacted, Yang said, "Well, what exactly, Weiss Schnee, happened on the night of 4/15/15 in training room B1 between yourself and the victim Ruby Rose?"

"Please don't talk like that Yang; it's going to get old fast, and it takes a lot longer than simply asking what happened," Weiss began, "However, here's what happened..."

"Yes?" Yang immediately interrupted.

"If you would display more patience than that of a gnat, you would find out. Anyways," Weiss said, continuing before her teammate could interrupt again. "Ruby and I went to the training room at the normal time, and she brought up glyph-binding and suggested that each of us create one. She had planned this far enough in advance to have not only found a textbook that covered the matter, but to also have thought of potential candidates for the particular dust we could use," Weiss explained. Weiss had decided to keep her own successful glyph a secret, at least for now, and continued her explanation without it. "Ruby asked me to create an acceleration glyph on her, a request that I obliged. Partway through, I was distracted by the door opening behind me, and made a mistake. Ruby screamed and I fainted. I don't know if anything happened next," Weiss finished, "Is that satisfactory? May we go to bed now, you realize we have work to do tomorrow correct?"

"Weiss, its the weekend, only you would have any work planned," Yang deadpanned, "Weiss, do you realize that you just permanently crippled my sister? You were there to stop her from doing stupid stuff to hurt herself! WHAT GAVE YOU THE RIGHT TO DO SOMETHING LIKE THIS TO HER?!" Yang's voice had risen steadily until she was shouting loud enough for the entire building to hear. Yang paused for air, "How do I know you didn't do this on purpose? You were just waiting for anything that would give you an excuse to 'mess up.'"

"Yang, I wouldn't even think to do something like that!" Weiss was floored by the accusation. "You have to believe me, I didn't mean to hurt her, I didn't mean to, I slipped, I…" Weiss was grasping for words, and was realizing that there was no proof she could offer.

Yang continued to stare into Weiss, "Did you do it so that you could become Team RWBY's leader, because I won't ever let that happen."

"No! Yang! Where is this coming from? You were joking around not 5 minutes ago," Weiss exclaimed. Just a few sentences ago, Yang had been making stupid innuendos; how had they gotten here?

"You only raised your voice or showed any concern after I accused you. You don't care in the slightest about Ruby's injury. Care to explain that?" Yang demanded, cracking her knuckles.

"Yang, I'm going to go. I do care about Ruby, I was just trying to tell the events as objectively as possible. We can talk about this further when you've calmed down," Weiss replied, trying not to provoke Yang further. Weiss rushed out of the room before Yang could react and took refuge in an abandoned classroom she used periodically when her teammates got too grating. "She'll see reason in the morning," Weiss reassured herself as she lined up chairs to make a bed. Surveying her work, she sighed, "The things I do for this team."

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Yang followed Weiss but lost her embarrassingly quickly. As mad as Yang was, she thought long enough to realize that using her gauntlets' knockback to speed up her search of the school was a bad idea. So instead, Yang slowly stalked her way through the hallwalls, hunting down her white-themed teammate.

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Oblivious to the drama playing out between her teammates, Blake sat down in the headmaster's office. Once Ozpin was settled behind his desk, Blake began, "Why does Ruby have a code to get into your office?"

"Hm, starting small; regardless, the answer to that explains everything else," Ozpin said, "How about a deal, if you can figure out what is going on, I'll tell you the details."

Blake pondered her options, "I assume you will answer tangential questions then?" Ozpin nodded. "How many guesses do I get?" Blake asked.

"One," Ozpin said.

It was still a better deal than she could've gotten; Ozpin could've simply refused to discuss it, but that didn't mean Blake was thrilled with her chances. Regardless, she had a game to play. "Alright, are you connected to Ruby's recent… vigorous… training?"

"Yes, though I don't believe I am entirely to blame," Ozpin answered.

"What else could be the cause?" Blake followed.

"I believe she shoulders much of the blame for the disaster that occurred at the end of your last away mission," Ozpin recalled.

Blake knew that, but wanted to make sure that Ozpin was thinking along that same track. If he had said anything else, Blake would have learned quite a bit. Continuing, Blake remembered a strange statement Ruby had reported Ozpin saying at the beginning of the year, "Would you consider this to be a mistake, Professor Ozpin?"

"That's a strange question. I consider many actions of mine to be mistakes, some of them grave, some of them trivial. However, there must be the benefit of perspective in order to judge any action, a luxury that I don't currently possess. Perhaps I can answer that question more fully in the future, but for the moment I cannot count any measure as a mistake until I see how it plays out," Ozpin said.

Alright, there was some information. Whatever was going on was long-term, so Blake couldn't use current events information. "During what time frame is this thing going to happen?" Blake asked.

"Ancient past and near future," Ozpin responded.

"How near?" Blake said.

"3-4 years," Ozpin said.

"Can I have time to research and then return to asking questions?" Blake intentionally phrased it to make it seem less confrontational. She didn't want to remind Ozpin that she had somewhat forced this conversation to ever occur, since he had seemingly become a willing participant.

"The rest of the school year will be busy with final exams and the Vytal Festival, and once the summer begins I'll be leaving for Atlas on business. On the last day of school there will be an opportunity to follow up, I trust you'll be ready," Ozpin allowed, "For now, I have to talk with Glynda; Ruby will need to be allowed out of combat training." Ozpin stood up and began to leave, "Best of luck Blake, I truly hope that you are successful."

Blake waited for Ozpin to leave before getting up. She had information to work with; she'd start with the ancient history. There were a number of cyclical events, comets, temperature. She would start there and branch out.

Ozpin considered the interview a tentative success. He very well may have lost Ruby, but if Blake managed to discover the details of the threat they faced, she could potentially be recruited. Blake was extremely self motivated and simply telling her wasn't guaranteed to motivate her enough. Regardless, for the moment Ozpin needed to talk to Glynda.

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Ruby dug through the pile of discarded weapons, trying not to spend too much time wondering over each of them. She still made time for some of the more interesting ones she found though; she really wanted to meet whoever had made the lance shotgun that was bigger than she was. Regardless, she eventually found an old set of trip mines. Motion detectors had been designed a couple decades ago but they had been nearly immediately overtaken by aura detectors, which boasted a longer range, and much higher sensitivity. For Ruby's purposes, the short range and low chance to be randomly triggered were necessary. She wasn't sure if it would work, but the current plan was to use her newly acquired control of individual petals that her semblance conjured to trigger the sensors. Each sensor would be connected to a different kind and purity of dust, and Ruby would find out what combinations created what positions. Ruby began to take apart one of the sensors so that she could key the machines to produce copies.

Once she had enough, she began weaving them into a grid and attaching each of them to a wide-base dust dispenser. Later she would make it fit nicely and not hinder her movements, but for now she was just going to try it. She grabbed a nearby sword and awkwardly put it in her crystallized hand. She created a fair number of petals and ran them over a couple of the dispensers.

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Review/PM Responses:

Bl4nk: Blake's guilt not showing up in the last chapter was an artifact of the last planned chapter being much longer than I thought it would be. Blake seems to get a moral "tunnel vision" and not realize the implications of her actions while she is doing them. She knew that she was part of the problem when she heard that Weiss got distracted by her entrance, but doesn't internalize it till she is on her own. The scene of her realizing her guilt was meant to be in the same chapter as the rest of the events. Instead its going to end up in the chapter after this one because my ability to judge the length of something appears to be incredibly poor. ::: There is a way to use the strange properties of Ruby's arm for combat. The arm is rigid, can't hold anything, and can only be moved at the shoulder; however, Ruby can make it effectively any shape she wants.

FOODninja-321: This probably would've come out on the third if not for making a DnD 4e custom class and an abridged series script. I might have overbooked this summer with miscellaneous things to write/model/program/develop, but at least I've never had time to be bored.

Its official, my ability to plan is a joke. The outline's chapter 5 is going to end in one more chapter, no matter how long it ends up. This chapter was another nightmare to write, but a lot of things happened that needed to. I know I'm really beating up these characters, but I love them all; I swear. As always thanks for reading and please review. Hope everyone enjoys.


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